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Lauren Citkowski is an aerospace engineer and Ford Racing program engineer who has built her early career at the intersection of satellite research and sports car motorsports — without ever sitting in the driver’s seat professionally, which makes her story no less interesting.

EARLY YEARS

Born in the late 1990s — circa 1998 to 1999, based on the best available evidence — Lauren Citkowski grew up in the Canton–Plymouth corridor of southeast Michigan, the kind of place where the automotive industry isn’t background noise but the actual fabric of daily life [4][7]. Public records associate her with Canton, Michigan, and her Facebook profile lists Plymouth as her current home, suggesting she has remained close to where she started [1][4]. Her full name in public databases appears as Lauren Walkuski Citkowski, indicating family ties to both the Citkowski and Walkuski surnames, with people-search aggregators placing possible relatives — including a Paul G. Citkowski and a Meredith Walkuski Citkowski — in the same Michigan region [6][18]. A ZoomInfo profile for Meredith Citkowski describes that individual as a Mustang Mach-E Program Management Analyst at Ford, hinting that Lauren may have grown up in a household already familiar with the automotive world in a professional sense [21]. None of the available sources discuss her childhood explicitly, so the specifics of her upbringing remain largely outside the documentary record.

OTHER INTERESTS

The public record on Lauren’s interests outside engineering and motorsports is thin, which isn’t unusual for someone early in her career who hasn’t cultivated a public persona around anything other than her work. What does emerge is a dry self-awareness: her Instagram bio reads “umich | duke | motorsports | stable enough for jury duty,” which suggests someone who takes her credentials seriously enough not to lead with them [29]. Beyond that, the sources simply don’t document hobbies, sports participation, or extracurricular interests in any verifiable detail, and this profile won’t invent them.

EARLY SUCCESS

The clearest early marker of Lauren Citkowski’s trajectory is her undergraduate research work at the University of Michigan, where she was competitively selected for a fellowship in the Multidisciplinary Design Program (MDP) and joined the Miniature Tether Electrodynamics Experiment — better known as MiTEE — team in January 2018 [25]. MiTEE is a CubeSat mission designed to test the use of Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion, offering a potential method to keep very small satellites in low Earth orbit without conventional thrusters [24][32]. It is the kind of project that attracts serious undergraduate engineers precisely because the stakes are real: student-built hardware, launched into space, either works or it doesn’t.

When the MiTEE-1 CubeSat finally reached orbit, Michigan Engineering’s news feature captured her reaction in a direct quote — years of student effort, suddenly airborne and operational [32]. Engineering.com also covered the project and named her among the student contributors who developed the electromagnetic tether propulsion method, describing the broader significance of the work for the growing commercial and scientific CubeSat ecosystem [24]. Being named in coverage of a genuine aerospace engineering milestone while still an undergraduate is not standard-issue student experience; it reflects both the quality of the research and her role within it.

She graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) in Aerospace Engineering [17]. From there, she entered Ford Motor Company through the Ford College Graduate (FCG) program — a structured entry-level pipeline that Ford uses to recruit and develop engineering talent — and eventually arrived at a role as Motorsports Sports Car Program Engineer at Ford Racing [1][17]. An Instagram Reel published by Ford captures her describing how an internship became the bridge to joining the same team as a mentor, the kind of origin story that’s common enough in the industry but rarely articulated as cleanly [3]. She is simultaneously pursuing a Master’s in Engineering Management, with Duke University listed across her profiles as the institution [17][1].

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

• 2018: Competitively selected for a University of Michigan Multidisciplinary Design Program research fellowship; joined the MiTEE CubeSat mission team in January of that year [25].
• 2021: Named as a contributor to the MiTEE-1 CubeSat project in Michigan Engineering / Michigan News coverage of the satellite’s launch, with a direct quote published marking the milestone [32].
• 2021: Featured in Engineering.com’s coverage of the MiTEE project, recognizing student engineers who developed a method to keep CubeSats in orbit using Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion [24].
• Ongoing: Appointed as Motorsports Sports Car Program Engineer at Ford Racing, working within Ford’s Mustang and GT4-adjacent sports car racing programs as a Ford College Graduate hire [1][17].
• Ongoing: Featured in McCumbee McAleer Racing’s MMR AeroSport National Women in Sport Day recognition as one of the women shaping the program’s engineering and operations [8].
• Ongoing: Listed among representatives on the Women in Motorsports North America Engineering & Mechanics page [11].
• Ongoing: Pursuing a Master’s in Engineering Management at Duke University while working full-time in motorsports engineering [17][1].

INSPIRATIONS

The available sources don’t document explicit statements from Lauren about mentors or inspirational figures in the traditional biographical sense. What the record does show is that a specific internship experience — and a specific mentor encountered during it — was meaningful enough to factor into her decision to pursue full-time employment with the same team at Ford Racing [3]. That’s not a small thing in an industry where the people you work with early often determine the direction you go. Beyond that data point, the sources don’t support further claims about her inspirations, and this profile leaves the question appropriately open.

REPUTATION

For someone still in the early phase of her career, Lauren Citkowski has accumulated a notable footprint in the circles that track women in motorsports engineering. Her inclusion in McCumbee McAleer Racing’s MMR AeroSport National Women in Sport Day feature places her in company that the organization considered worth celebrating publicly, which is a form of professional endorsement [8]. Her listing on the Women in Motorsports North America Engineering & Mechanics page situates her within a community that is actively working to document and amplify the presence of women in exactly the technical roles that have historically gone unrecognized [11].

The University of Michigan’s coverage of her MiTEE work emphasizes not just her technical contributions but the interpersonal and collaborative dimensions of the project — the kind of framing institutions use when they want to suggest that a student brings more than raw ability to a team [25][32]. The Ford Racing Instagram Reel featuring her speaks to the same dual-axis reputation: technically credible enough to work in a demanding motorsports program, and personable enough to be put on camera representing the brand [3]. None of this constitutes fame, but in the specific ecosystem of motorsports engineering, name recognition among the right organizations at this stage of a career is worth noting.

FUTURE GOALS/PLANS

The ongoing pursuit of a Master’s in Engineering Management at Duke University while simultaneously working as a Ford Racing program engineer signals clear intent: this is someone building credentials for leadership, not just deepening a single technical specialty [17][1]. Engineering management degrees at the graduate level are typically pursued by people who expect to be running programs rather than just contributing to them. Whether that means ascending within Ford’s motorsports structure, moving into broader vehicle program management, or something else entirely, the sources don’t say — but the academic investment suggests she is thinking about where she wants to be well beyond her current role.

References:

Lauren Citkowski – Facebook Profile
Youngsville Sports Complex – Dick’s Sporting Goods Post
Instagram Reel – Internships and Opportunities (Ford Racing / Lauren Citkowski)
Michigan Resident Database – Lauren Citkowski
YouTube – Related Video
ZabaSearch – Paul Citkowski
National Public Data – Lauren Citkowski
McCumbee McAleer Racing – National Women in Sport Day Feature
Ford Philanthropy – Facebook Photo
UTMB – Dorian Citkowski Runner Profile
Women in Motorsports North America – Engineering & Mechanics
Instagram Post – Lauren Citkowski / Ford Motorsports
Ford Motor Company – Corporate Leadership
Kohr Motorsports – Facebook Post
Instagram Reel – Ford Racing / Motorsports Feature
Beyond The Badge NY – Mustang Magic Sponsorship Post
Success.ai – Lauren Citkowski Professional Profile
Whitepages – Paul Sitkowski / Citkowski Family
Facebook – Hooked on Driving Mid-Atlantic Feature
Instagram Post – MiTEE / University of Michigan
ZoomInfo – Meredith Citkowski
MustangKlaus – Silverhorse Racing Partnership Post
Academy Motorsport – Facebook Video
Engineering.com – Engineering Students Develop Method to Keep CubeSats in Orbit
University of Michigan MDP – Lauren Citkowski Profile
YouTube – MiTEE CubeSat Related Video
Michigan News – Pioneering a Way to Keep Very Small Satellites in Orbit
Instagram Post – Ford Motorsports / Women in Engineering
Instagram – Lauren Citkowski (@laurencski)
Kohr Motorsports – T-Shirts Back in Stock Post
Facebook Group Post – Motorsports Community
Michigan Engineering News – Pioneering a Way to Keep Very Small Satellites in Orbit (January 2021)
Against the Current – Related Feature
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